Late-Term Abortionist Says Link Between Abortion and Mental Illness is Based on 'Junk Science'

On Monday, PBS aired the controversial documentary "After Tiller," a film that sympathizes with the four remaining late-term abortionists in the country. Pro-life groups immediately filed petitions urging the station to remove the film from its lineup, to no avail. Today, the documentary's filmmakers and Dr. Susan Robinson, one of the abortionists featured in the film, participated in a Google Chat to field viewers' questions. Their "answers" were misleading, accusatory, and, at times, outright lies.

"What is the hardest part of your job?," one Google participant asked Dr. Robinson:

"Listening to the desperate, sad stories and not taking it on as my personal sadness."

This wasn't the first time Robinson tried to characterize herself as a victim. She also claimed she had to take security precautions to protect herself against pro-life activists who protest the work she does. Robinson explained that she sees several patients a month:

"Between 3-5 a week and 15-20 a month. Almost all who come stay and have an abortion. They very rarely change their mind. They've been thoroughly counseled."

Thoroughly counseled? What exactly does that mean? Well, I submitted my question - and Dr. Robinson offered a misleading and not quite detailed answer:

"During these phone sessions, I ask questions like, 'When did you find out if you got pregnant? What would she do if we couldn't help her? Was this an assault?' Then we describe in detail what the procedure is like and answer patients' questions and help to arrange funding."

Then came the outright lies:

"The link between abortion and breast cancer is non-existent. The link between abortion and mental illness is non-existent - it's all based on junk science. These are the same people who believe the earth is flat."

Contrary to Robinson's claims, the health risks associated with abortion are very much a reality. A recent study conducted in China revealed there was a 44 percent increase risk in breast cancer for women who've had abortions. As for mental illness, I can attest that post-abortion syndrome exists based on conversations I've had with post-abortive women. I wrote a piece about the after effects of abortion in a former issue of Townhall Magazine. For that story, I interviewed women who were dealing with consequences such as alcoholism, depression, and recurring nightmares after having an abortion years earlier. Try telling them there's no correlation between the procedure and mental illness. If you don't want to rely on my word, however, take a look at these statistics.

Another Google chat participant asked the filmmakers if they bothered to follow up with any of the women in the film who'd had abortions to see if they were dealing with any regret. Director Martha Lane responded:

"Our film making decision was to follow the doctors, not patients, so we didn't follow up. But, that's certainly an interesting question."

Perhaps if they had bothered to follow up with the patients in their film, they'd discover that the procedure they champion can often have detrimental effects.

Robinson had time to utter one more lie before she signed off of Google:

"I am pro-life."

She then insisted that women's lives "trump the fetus" and that women who are "forced" to stay pregnant are treated as "housing units." If Robinson truly cared about women's lives, she'd consider abortion's physical and mental effects I outlined above.